NBS: China industrial firms' Jan-Aug profits fall 2% YoY

China's sizable industrial firms saw their gross profits decline by 2.1% on year to total Yuan 5.53 trillion ($772 billion) over January-August, as against the 1.1% on-year dip for the first seven months, according to the latest data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday morning.

For August alone, these industrial firms' gross profits posted a narrower on-year decline of 7% to reach Yuan 632.5 billion, as against the 11.5% on-year contraction for July, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.

"Overall, industrial enterprises' profits showed signs of recovery with the decline (in August) narrowing from the prior month. The industrial structure improved moderately, and profits of midstream and downstream sectors continued to recover," Zhu Hong, NBS's senior statistician, was quoted as saying.

"However, these enterprises' production and operation costs remained high, coupled with the unstable external environment and many other uncertainties, the foundation for the improvement of their profitability is not solid," Zhu added.

The latest NBS data showed that 16 of 41 Chinese industrial sectors saw their profits gain on year over January-August, among which gross profits for the coal mining and washing sector were the largest at Yuan 709 billion, or having surged by 112% on year. The chemical sector ranked the second-highest in total profits, with the value up 5% on year to Yuan 541.6 billion.

On the other hand, China's ferrous mining and processing sector saw its profits drop 27.9% on year to Yuan 48 billion over the past eight months, while the steelmaking and processing sector posted the largest on-year decline among all sectors, slumping 87.7% on year to Yuan 41 billion.

The country's non-ferrous mining and processing sector registered a 44.3% on-year gain in profits to Yuan 48.1 billion during the same period, while Chinese non-ferrous smelters and fabricators saw their profits slip 6.6% on year to Yuan 178.7 billion.

Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com

Edited by Zhenqi Yang, yangzhenqi@mysteel.com

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.